Reflection
by Maria Rocket
Summary: This one is on the creepy side... Quatre receives a disturbing visitor on Christmas Eve. No, it isn't a ghost. But then, who or what is it? Contains a little bit of shounen-ai towards the end.


Reflection

by Maria Rocket

***

Author's Notes: This is a strange and confusing fic, like most of the stuff I write. I'm a little wary about posting this, since it's likely to get me flamed if interpreted the wrong way...and since it's confusing, the likelihood of misinterpretation is skyhigh. ^^;; Aw well... Anywhoo, I apologize in advance for the migraines this thing may induce, and ya should know that this also contains shounen-ai. 

***

***

Silence was everywhere. Every hallway and room was still. Only the young master of the estate remained, sitting at the desk in his study, reading over a stack of paperwork. His back was slightly hunched over, aching with tension. His blue eyes, which could be as brilliant as the desert sky, were dark and unfocused. It was Christmas Eve, and he had dismissed all his servants so they could spend Christmas with their families. He was all alone.

So he was unnerved when he felt a presence in the room. He hadn't heard anyone enter, no footsteps, not even the squeak of the door opening. Yet there was someone standing right in front of his desk. Lifting his head, he looked up to see who was there. As soon as he did, his breath strangled lightly deep in his throat. His hands spasmed gently against the polished wood of his desk. 

No, not again! Not after all this time...!

His heart pounded fearfully in his chest. Was he losing his mind? He silently prayed for his visitor to go away, but the vision remained. Before his wide, frightened eyes was a young man. He had shadowy aquamarine eyes, almost expressionless, but there was a deep sadness hidden within them. The color of the visitor's short wavy hair reminded him of sunlight on desert sand. He was barefoot and barechested, wearing only wrinkled light-gray slacks and a rich blue vest that hung open, exposing a smooth expanse of warm ivory skin. He made no movement, other than to stare directly at the trembling figure sitting at the desk. 

The young man sitting there stared back, seeing his reflection in the visitor's glassy eyes. The visitor who looked exactly like him. He wanted to scream, but he knew no one would hear him. He wanted to run, but knew from experience that there was no escape. It could find him anywhere.

"Hello Quatre."

With a startled cry, Quatre jumped out of his seat and nearly fell backwards before hitting the wall behind him. It talked! Never, ever, had it made a sound before! 

"Go away!" Quatre finally broke down and screamed at it. 

"I can't."

Quatre recoiled again, but not as violently as before. It was speaking with his voice, though it sounded strange to his ears. But he knew that no one heard their voice the way others heard it. As he moved along the wall closer to the door, he watched his double's eyes follow his movements.

"What are you?" Quatre demanded nervously. 

"I don't know." 

Quatre stood still. "Are you...me?"

"I don't think so."

A dread more chilling than anything he'd ever felt before swept through him. Despite his doubts, deep down, he knew he wasn't going crazy. This awful thing, whatever it was, was very real. He swallowed softly, remembering all the way back to his early childhood memories. Back then, he hadn't been afraid like he was now. He'd been too young to find anything unusual about a little boy that looked just like him. In fact, he had been a welcome playmate, in a lonely mansion. 

As he grew, so had the other boy. They were always identical. When he grew too old for imaginary friends, his father began to worry. It was a firm talk from his father that had first alerted to Quatre that there was something strange about his friend. He started to notice that his double never spoke, how much his double would cling to him whenever he had the opportunity, and how no one else could see his double. Quatre became afraid, and started running away whenever he saw the other boy. After that, he rarely saw him.

However, as the years went by, Quatre continued to see him from time to time. Sometimes he would turn around and see him standing across a crowded room, or wake up in the middle of the night to find his double sitting in his bedroom. Always the double would stare at him, and sometimes reach out towards him. But he would never speak. Quatre told no one, because he knew people would think he was crazy, especially his father. Instead he tried to ignore the double, and inbetween the sightings, he would convince himself he'd been imagining things. Around age fourteen, he finally stopped seeing the double, and before long, he'd buried the troubling memories away as childish fantasy.

Until now.

Trying not to panic, Quatre took a deep breath. "What do you want? Why can't you leave me alone!?"

The double also took a deep breath. "I want to be complete."

"What do you mean, complete?" Quatre frowned, not entirely sure if he really wanted to know.

"You know what I mean," the double also frowned. "You feel it too."

"I'm not so sure I do."

"Yes you do. I know you do. You're incomplete too."

"What?" Quatre felt a trembling deep inside as his double's words struck home.

***

On a resource satellite not too far away, Quatre's older sister Iria was browsing through an old storage box. It was dusty there in the back of her closet, but she remembered keeping some of her old Christmas ornaments packed away in there. As she continued to dig around, she noticed a large manila envelope poking out between a stack of old Christmas cards. Curious, she pulled it out and slid the contents out onto her palm. Recognizing what she held, she smiled sadly.

They were copies of old photos and medical records she'd researched years ago. On the top of the pile was a black and white ultrasound photo with notes scrawled around it. With her trained medical eye, she very easily saw the two tiny curled forms in the image. At the bottom, it was marked 'Quaterine Winner AC 180.'

She ran her fingertips gently across the photo. Identical twins. Her mother had considered it a miracle, but carrying twins had reduced her odds of surviving the pregnancy to virtually nothing. It was a miracle in a way that Quatre had survived. The stress and complications had killed both his mother and brother. 

"My little Quatre," she sighed, slipping the photos and papers back into the envelope. "It's Christmas Eve, and you're probably there all alone." 

After retrieving her small box of ornaments, she decided she would take a shuttle and visit her brother first thing in the morning. With a brightened smile, she shut the closet door.

***

"You feel like you're missing a part of your soul. There's a lonely, cold, emptiness inside of you. And what hurts the most is that you can feel your other half out there, speaking to you in a quiet warm voice, but you can never reach it. But you ache for it like you ache for nothing else." Quatre's double answered softly.

"Missing part of your soul...?" Quatre whispered. He did know what the double was talking about. He knew that feeling, which often held him in the grips of grief. But he had merely endured it like he had all the pain in his life. 

"You're the missing part of my soul, just as I am yours."

Quatre straightened up against the wall in confused shock. "But how's any of this possible? And I thought you said you weren't me!"

"I'm not you. I'm the other part of you."

Feeling as though he were in a dream, Quatre just stared blankly at his double.

"I don't understand all of this myself. I only want to be complete..."

"H-How?"

"I don't know," the double replied. "But it must be soon."

Still feeling nervous, Quatre slowly approached him. "I'm not sure how I feel about that..." His eyes darted up and down the double suspiciously. Then he reached out and poked it in the shoulder. The double was soft and warm to the touch. Quatre drew back in surprise.

"You're not a ghost!"

"I never said I was a ghost," the double almost looked a little annoyed. "I'm no more dead than you are. Just different."

"But...how can you be alive?" Quatre poked at the double's shoulder again, his curiousity getting the better of him. "Whatever you are...you just appear out of thin air, you can't be alive, not like me."

"My life is different from yours..." The double reached out and touched Quatre's arm lightly. Then in one smooth movement, he suddenly moved forward and and put his arms around Quatre, holding him in a tight embrace. Quatre cried out in shock, but he couldn't move.

After a moment, his fear left him, replaced by a comforting warmth that enveloped him and drew him in. His head fell onto the other's shoulder as he went slack against him. He felt the greatest sense of peace and love he had ever felt. The emptiness inside of him had vanished, and he felt more alive than he ever had before. Moving to embrace his other half, Quatre closed his eyes tightly as moisture threatened to escape them. He realized that he knew this feeling, that he'd felt it before...

"Who are you?"

"I have no name, if that's what you mean." The other whispered quietly, his arms squeezing gently around Quatre. "But you've given me at least three."

"I have?"

"You've called me your Space Heart and Sandrock before..." Then the doorbell rang.

Quatre opened his eyes. "Sandrock?"

"I'm here."

"But you were around long before the gundam was even built..."

"I wasn't the gundam, but I was always with you. And now I'm here."

The doorbell rang again.

Quatre sighed. "I wonder who that could be."

"I told you. It's me. I'm here."

Slowly, Quatre drew back to look his double in the eyes. "What do you mean... that's you down there at the door?"

"It's the part of me that's like you," the double replied, looking a little sad. "After we were separated, I had to be someone else... But I was still only half. I've tried to stay with you, but I can't anymore. Not like this. Time has me, and I'm losing myself in who I've become." His eyes looked at Quatre's with longing. "But I still want to be complete."

"I'm still not sure I understand all this," Quatre reached out for him again. "But I want..." Then the double disappeared, and his hand touched emptiness. His eyes widened with loss. "No! Come back!"

The doorbell rang again.

Practically throwing himself at the door, Quatre flung it open and ran downstairs as fast as he could go. Upon reaching the huge twin doors at the front of the mansion, Quatre fumbled with the large locks. Pulling them open, he was momentarily blinded by a cold flurry of snow. When he'd recovered, he squinted through the wind at the bundled figure standing in the doorway holding a steaming metal pot.

"Hello?"

"Hello Quatre," came the quiet muffled reply from behind a thick red scarf. Two dark forest green eyes looked back at the wide-eyed and barefoot Arab. "I hope I'm not disturbing you. Catherine sent some chicken tamales... Are you okay?"

Quatre was shaking from the cold, staring in disbelief. "Trowa?"

Calm green eyes took in Quatre's state of undress, then stepped forward to hand over the pot of tamales. The blonde took them absently, still staring at Trowa, who then turned to push the doors closed. The wind abruptly stopped playing with Quatre's hair, leaving the frosted gold locks to fall messily into his face.

When Trowa turned around, Quatre was still staring with that future roadkill look. With a raised eyebrow, Trowa took the pot from Quatre again. 

"Umm... I'll just put these in the kitchen."

Watching Trowa walk past with a slow motion of his head, Quatre was speechless. But as soon as Trowa walked out of sight, Quatre hurried after him. When he reached the kitchen, the floor squeaked as he skid to a stop. Trowa had set the pot on the counter and had prepared two plates on the small sitting table usually used for preparing food.

Trowa was unwrapping himself from his scarf like a mummy. Quatre sat beside him as Trowa pulled his gloves off. Green eyes gave him a curious look, lingering on the blonde's bare chest.

"Isn't it too cold to go around like that?"

A faint blush colored Quatre's cheeks, clearly spreading to the rest of him as well. "Oh. Well, as long as I don't go out like this."

"You're nervous," Trowa forked a bit of tamale from his plate and gave Quatre a slight frown. "Is there something wrong?"

"Nothing." Quatre forced himself to smile. "I guess I'm just jumpy in this big house all by myself." He wondered if Trowa had any idea of what had been happening, but if he did, he certainly gave no sign of it. He seemed to be no different than the Trowa that Quatre had always known. 

"Hmm..." Trowa eyed Quatre suspiciously. Then he smirked ever so slightly and put his fork impaled tamale towards Quatre. "Then eat this, maybe it'll calm you down. Besides, Cathy is going to want your opinion on her Christmas cooking the next time she sees you."

Leaning over a little, Quatre took the offered tamale into his mouth, then sat back again, chewing slowly. Trowa slid the fork back, watching Quatre closely for a moment before looking away to fork another piece of the tamale. They both ate in silence for a few minutes, listening to the clock ticking behind them on the wall, thinking their own private thoughts. The silence was finally broken by the moan of Quatre's chair against the floor as he slid back and stood up, then walked past the table.

As he opened the refridgerator, Quatre could see Trowa watching him in the mirror-like surface of the door handle. He quickly retrieved a small carton before shutting the door again. He poured a thick whitish substance from the carton into two glasses before returning to the table.

"Eggnog," Quatre smiled shyly, handing a glass to Trowa. "One of the kitchen staff bought it. It's kinda sweet."

Trowa nodded, taking a sip. "So what are you doing here all by yourself?"

"Oh, I was giving some of the staff the night and next day off for the holiday, so I decided to just let them all off." He licked his lips lightly. "It's not like I can't take care of myself."

"I see," Trowa brushed his coppery hair back uselessly. "I'm guessing you don't celebrate Christmas? I thought you went to one of your sisters' Christmas parties last year."

"No." Quatre took a long drink from his cup, then set it down with a smile. "A few of my sisters do though, and I like all the festivities."

"Ah."

"I'm glad you came, Trowa," said Quatre, trying not to giggle at the little white eggnog mustache his guest was sporting. "It was getting kinda lonely here." Not to mention strange, he thought. In Trowa's familiar presence, he was beginning to wonder if he'd been hallucinating everything that'd happened upstairs.

Wiping away the eggnog mustache with the back of his hand, Trowa's eyes were mirthful. "You looked quite spooked a few minutes ago. Did a Christmas ghost visit you?"

Quatre blinked for a moment, then laughed nervously. "No, and considering where we were some of our past Christmases, I don't think I'd like to see a ghost of Christmas past."

With a nod, Trowa stood, tossing his scarf over his shoulder. "I wouldn't worry about it, you're far from an old miser."

"A young miser, maybe?" Quatre stood as well, giving Trowa a playful poke in the chest. "I ate more chocolates than I should've yesterday. And I didn't share a one."

"Ah, so that's why you're so sweet," Trowa replied, in a voice that reminded Quatre of something light and rich. As he followed Trowa from the kitchen, his heart began to sink as he realized they were headed back towards the front door.

"Trowa..." He started to protest uncertainly.

When Trowa stopped a foot before the door, Quatre also stopped right behind him. The blonde was startled when Trowa turned around and looked down at him nervously. Why was Trowa nervous?

"Yes, Quatre?"

"Umm..." Quatre was momentarily at a loss for words. "You're going?"

"If you want me to."

"But..." Quatre rubbed at the back of his neck, searching for something to say, anything so Trowa would stay. "But it's snowing outside. Catherine wouldn't want you walking all the way back to the circus in that terrible weather. You could stay here until it lets up." Like, Quatre thought to himself, sometime in July.

Trowa looked amused. "Okay."

"Alright," Quatre beamed. Inside, he was singing praises to Allah, and Christmas elves, and tamales, and the hyper happy peoples running the colony's artificial weather systems. Do those people work for me? He wondered giddily. If they do, they're getting a raise! "I'll just give Catherine a call and inform her of the situation. And I'll get to thank her for the tamales!" He turned to do that, but as he turned to go down the hallway, he noticed that Trowa hadn't moved from the spot in front of the door. Feeling something amiss, he turned around.

"Trowa?" He frowned, feeling the hair rising along the back of his neck. Trowa didn't respond. He just stood there, his arms crossed, staring back at Quatre.

Slowly walking back, Quatre waved a hand in the air in front of him. "You okay, Trowa?"

Trowa just stood and stared.

Quatre finally stopped right in front of Trowa again. "Trowa, is something wrong?"

"Not at all."

"Then why...?"

Trowa's eyes were suddenly glittering with mischief. "I didn't come back here to leave, Quatre."

"Huh?" Quatre blinked in puzzlement.

Closing his eyes with a satisfied smile, Trowa pointed up.

Following the slender arm and finger, Quatre looked up towards the ceiling, or rather the hanging chandelier right over their heads. Hanging from the bottom of it was a little green leafy sprig with tiny red berries on it. He blinked curiously.

"What's that? I guess one of the servants must of stuck it up there..." Quatre looked down from the green and red plant, to Trowa, who was smiling a little too much.

"It's called mistletoe."

"Mistletoe...?" Quatre's eyes widened. "Oh no..."

"Yes," Trowa nodded solemnly. "It's tradition, Quatre. And you can't weasel out of it, or risk offending me."

Quatre bit back his laughter. "Well, then I guess I'll have to do the honorable thing." 

Feeling the heat rising beneath his skin, Quatre held Trowa's arms gently, closed his eyes, and lifted his face towards him with a goofy little expectant smile. He heard Trowa give a small breathy chuckle before sliding his arms comfortably around the blonde and pulling him close against him. Then everything fell blissfully silent as Trowa leaned in to meet Quatre's lips.

Quatre was sure that if Trowa hadn't been holding onto him, he might have floated away. He felt so incredibly light and happy. His relationship with Trowa was a peculiar on and off one, where they'd be making out like fools one moment, and only friends the next. Neither was in a rush to commit to anything. They were perfectly content in their situation, waiting for their emotions to mature and lead them onto a final decision about their relationship. If there ever was one.

However at that moment, Quatre knew in a heartbeat that he'd be spending the rest of the night cuddled up with Trowa, wrapped in blankets on the sofa, in front of a crackling, glowing fire, sharing a hot cocoa with little marshmellows in it, while listening to soothing music and whispering sweet nothings to each other. And then... With a deep groan, Quatre absolutely melted in Trowa's arms, lost in his prophetic fantasy.

His eyes were still closed as Trowa pulled back just enough to nip tenderly at his kiss swollen lips. "You're beautiful," he breathed, slipping his fingers through the thick, wavy silk of Quatre's hair.

Quatre only shivered ecstatically in response. Allah, he whispered somewhere deep inside, when Trowa gives a kiss, the heavens come crashing down. It was like... 

His eyes opened slowly to meet Trowa's dark emeralds, filled with emotion. He felt warm inside. All the fear and emptiness inside of him was gone. He felt just like he'd always felt in Trowa's arms. Just like he'd felt in the arms of his double... Then he saw himself reflected in those dark eyes... Trowa's eyes.

"Oh Trowa," he dropped his head and sobbed, throwing his arms about his beloved's neck.

Trowa gasped slightly in surprise. "What's wrong, Quatre?"

"Absolutely nothing...just please kiss me again..." Quatre pleaded.

In response, Trowa brought his hand around to cup the side of Quatre's face and lifted it back towards him. Then he dipped his head down to kiss Quatre deeply with a passion neither had felt before. Quatre felt his toes curl beneath him into the carpet, and he leaned further into the kiss with a soft, muffled sigh of pleasure. 

He was finally complete.


End file.
